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SPORTS: WOMEN'S BOXING
Donning
The Gloves
The sport has gathered momentum
in India in the six months since it was introduced in 2000
By Arun Ram
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SMASH HIT: Girls of junior division spar at a
boxing club in New Delhi
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I Would like to
be a famous boxer rather than a Miss Universe." She's a teenager
in a land enamoured with beauty and its queens, surely she cannot mean
she doesn't want the tiara, the tears and world peace? Jyoti Gupta stares
like it's the stupidest question she's ever heard. She's standing in a
stuffy stadium, sweating in her tracksuit and has just gone a couple of
rounds to win a welterweight quarter-final. She wants this instead: the
bell and the gloves, the power and the punches. "I am beauty conscious
but not when I have to choose between beauty and boxing ... once in the
ring, I forget everything else,'' she says. And Gupta will have you know
something more. "Why did I choose boxing? I didn't. It chose me."
Outside Chennai's Nehru Stadium, venue of the
first women's boxing nationals, girls are jogging on the lawns, sipping
cola, jostling with one another and exchanging mock punches. Inside, it's
different: the fists carry real weight and a message that Indian sport
had better get used to quickly. The country's women boxers are throwing
their weight behind their punches, looking for recognition and appreciation
of their skill.
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"The endurance
level is good, but they need to be trained." Manoj
Kumar Bhat,
Coach, Haryana team
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Imperceptibly, women's boxing in India has gathered
momentum since it was introduced in 2000. There were junior boys' bouts
on at Nehru Stadium but what caught the fancy of crowds was the girls'
ring, replete with its novelty. The punches may have been less powerful,
but the technique was spot on, the lefts and rights, the jabs and the
upper cuts all flowing in smooth combination. Girls, aged between 16 and
24, participated in the nationals in 13 weight categories, each of them
keen to discover-and display-not just her prowess as a pugilist, but also
the degree of her strength and endurance.
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"I'm confident
of taking on even the boys."
Parveen,
boxer from Chennai
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Sanjukta Ghosh, a featherweight semi-finalist
from Kolkata is 22, nursing a swollen nose and talking fight philosophy.
"Overcoming fear is vital. Once in the ring, I forget about pain.
To be frank, initially I was afraid of getting injured but I came out
of it and can take any punch," she says. Ghosh rubs an ice bag over
her nose, even as she explains the benefits of being able to take a punch:
"It adds to your will power."
Parveen, 18, from Chennai says, "I used
to close my eyes in fear and get hurt in the process. Not anymore. Today
I am confident of taking on even the boys." After school, this teenager
quit studies because her family couldn't afford the cost of further education,
and began to box with the blessings of her weightlifter father. Her relatives
are critical of her new-found vocation, finding it downright bizarre for
a Muslim girl. "They cannot be blamed for wanting me to be burkha-clad.
But they will soon realise that the Indian woman is changing and will
conquer all fields," Parveen says. It is a sunny outlook that time
and Indian sports politics will probably quash. For the moment though,
the girls are discovering their own power.
Boxers and coaches believe that the biggest
impediment to women's boxing acquiring recognition has been the general
mindset that the "sweet science" is not meant for the "kinder,
gentler" sex. This is amateur boxing, where rules and protective
gear-head guards, gum shields and chest protector-are compulsory. "Boxing
does not figure in the top-five list of injury-prone sports. Women's boxing
is safer than men's boxing," says Manoj Kumar Bhat, coach of the
Haryana team.
Bhat has made another discovery: girls from
villages-which is where most Indian boxers come from-are more likely to
have the willingness to take pain and are also better equipped to handle
physical rigours. "That's because manual labour is a part of rural
life. But though they have a good endurance level, they need to be trained
properly," he says. Economics plays a crucial role too. For most
of the girls and boys from rural India, a major attraction is the benefit
of getting jobs that spring from sport. One of them is Sushma Jawala Singh,
daughter of a Rewari farmer, who hopes her 18 consecutive victorious bouts
might help her get a government job under the sports quota. Incidentally,
the entire Haryana state women's boxing team comes from the village of
Rewari. The squad was recruited when coach Bhat walked into the local
school and asked who wanted to box. Of the 70 volunteers, nine were found
to be good at the basics and Bhat took it from there.
Tamil Nadu team captain M. Eswari, who is now
the national light welterweight champion, is also from a family fallen
on hard times. Eswari gives credit to her coach K. Kumar for bringing
her from the village of Ramanathapuram to a world with infinitely greater
opportunities. "My coach and the Tamil Nadu Amateur Boxing Association
(TNABA) Secretary Karunakaran taught me this sport," says the 5ft
8in-tall Eswari. "She is tomorrow's promise," says TNABA President
P.W.C. Davidar, "but we have to think of some financial support.
Poverty should not be allowed to snuff out a promising career."
Today not many government agencies or private
firms have come forward to provide jobs to women boxers. Davidar attributes
this to the fact that women's boxing is still a nascent sport and not
part of the Olympic programme.
Like their male counterparts, women boxers from
Manipur are also amongst the toughest in the country. "I think we
have it in our blood. We are natural fighters," says M. Chungneijag
Kom who will box for India at the Asian Women's Championships in China
in April. Kom will also be part of the first Indian women's team that
will compete in the world championships in Germany this September. Rural
Haryana has taken to the sport enthusiastically, says Bhat, specially
after Sushma was accorded a reception by her village panchayat when she
won the recent state championships.
The Chennai nationals set the TNABA back by
Rs 16 lakh. But the response of the country's women boxers cannot be measured
financially. "These girls are tough," says a Tamil Nadu boxer
watching her teammate take a punch in the face from a Manipuri. "I
don't think so," says her friend, "she has two hands and so
do our girls." The logic does not seem to be working in the ring.
The referee pulls the contenders apart and counts. The local boxer wants
to continue, but collapses while trying to raise her hand. The crowd cheers
the victor while a doctor rushes over to the fallen boxer. It takes 10
minutes to get her on her feet. "It happens," says her coach,
"she is just tired. She needs more stamina. She'll fight again."
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